(This guide may be out of date on alpha 9 release so bear with me while I update it to the new way, which is that so far in exp alpha 9 the hover engines need to be placed on the second layer and not the third, this will mean refitting any existing vessels with second layer hovers and removing the third layer hovers. A HV Boat building guide. with a focus on engineering. (this guide only uses the original hover engines and does not cater for the hover thrusters which may require a separate guide if I can make functional watercraft with them) If at any time i refer to hover thrusters in this thread It will actually mean hover engines and I just used incorrect terminology. I know there will not be a huge call for boat building anytime soon but none the less I figured out the mechanics to make boats work sp and mp and so here is a guide if you want to give it a try. Some of you may say "but hv sink when they touch water ?" That is only true if you use or build a hv with the typical concept of hovers at the bottom, like most of the workshop, typical hv immediately drown when touching water because the hover engines touch the water first. This would give the impression that riding something like a HV boat with the hull in the water would be impossible. However building with my concept gives you something completely different and proves that you can indeed have working boats in water for sp and mp. First there are 2 major issues you should be aware of before making a boat. ISSUE: 1. Without a doubt the most important issue, the hover height of a hv over water always resets to 0.80 on a MP server when you stand up ! (not in sp) this means we MUST place our hover thrusters within the third row height of blocks to prevent this auto correcting height reset from interfering with our vessel during play and sinking said vessel. You will now instead have a platform that floats in the water at 0.80m default so when standing from helm on a mp server, the vessel does not budge and stays where it should be at the designed water ride height. Please take into account those hover placement requirements when designing your vessel, else at the end you will have to pull it apart to fit the hovers where they really need to go. Searcher 600 displaying cutaway third level hover thrusters. A crude platform displaying the height of hovers and the depth to which the bottom block row sinks at 0.80 (does not matter where the core or helm is placed does not matter how big the vessel is or the size of the hover thusters used, this rule is a constant) As several inches of the bottom level are still visible above the waterline this shows that this particular platform is very light weight, we can add a bunch of stuff before worrying about dropping below the waterline and needing more hovers. ISSUE : 2. Any HV travelling over 32m/s for a sustained period whilst in the water at 0.80 on a MP server (not in sp) will sometimes start to dip, and occasionally just outright nosedive and sink. (a detection bug that needs to be addressed) If you build fast boats you will see this problem often, if you build slow speed luxury yachts you will most likely never see the issue. Those factual warnings aside. With my method the bottom block layer rides under the water surface at all times with maybe 3 or 4 inches of that layer being above the water surface. You will not have to adjust the hover height of 0.80 unless you decide to go over land. On land these boats will act like normal hv but will have less ground clearance due to hovers being on the third row. So now you have a vessel that sits in the water not on it or above it and moves perfectly in all directions ! WEIGHT: Determining load is easy, if hovers are third level and current height is 0.80, the bottom row of blocks (spray black to see the waterline) will always show a couple of inches above the waterline. if your on the waterline then your technically overloaded or close, this will result in water appearing in the cabin, add more hovers or reduce weight. A safe vessel should always have a few inches of the bottom blocks just above the water line, this allows players to add a bit of extra cargo here and there during play. Always build in normal steel and save weight anywhere possible with alternatives. BALANCE: Take care when adding heavier devices to one side of the vessel. You must test the horizon level by taking the helm and seeing if the vessel tilts one way or the other, you then press O to level out after being idle for a few seconds to try and gauge which way and how much if any the vessel might be tilting, then use artificial mass blocks to counter the weight on the opposite side of the vessel. Most of my boats have hidden mass blocks here and there for balance. ENGINES: For realism sake and the ability to enjoy a cruise and to avoid running into issue number 2 mentioned at the start of the thread, use as few thrusters as possible in the interest of making the vessel seemingly more realistic in acceleration curve and top speeds as well as not overloading you with weight. Try and use more side thrusters than you have ahead thrusters, your handling will become more boat like an d accurate. ANTI SINK: Please note that spawning a hv even a boat over water in survival game is not a good idea, unpowered it will sink immediately however it would be a good opportunity to test the following ! If you want your boat or hv to be able to pull itself out of the water when accidentally sunk, place another hover thruster even higher than your third row set at the front or rear end whichever is furthest from the helm. So if your extra hover is at the front end, you would hold the backward arrow on your keyboard in the event of a sinking until the front end slowly rotates up, breaching the surface of the water and when it reaches the height of your "EXTRA HOVER" that hover will give you a boost upward, you will clearly see this boost as the hover catches the top of the water surface and throws your front end up,usually high enough to catch on your main hovers on the third row. You can then use the O key or whatever auto level button that you use, to bring up the rest of the ship, you may need to tease the O key fast repeatedly rather than push hold, depends on the vessel size really and in some cases it is better to set the hover height to 3.0 before trying to unsink a vessel. Here is the bow (front) service area for the vessel pictured. you can see a hover at my feet, that is 1 of the regular third row hovers and another 2 either side of me out of shot. You can see a yellow hover ahead and higher, this is to help me recover from sunken state, it serves no purpose until I am under water sunken, it will catch the water surface as I rotate ship with backward arrow when sunk as described in the above procedure. In theory you could use a chain of these hovers vertically for the perfect sink recovery system, such I was forced to use on my HV cruise ship which really would not accept anything less than 3 stacks of large hovers with maybe 4-6 in a stack that would sequentially chain lift the vessel up when i tease the O key after holding the back arrow for nearly 2 minutes lol. If your overall build is too high you may find it very difficult to make a functioning anti sink system, for example a boat with a tall sail in the middle when sunk will sink much further than the average boat making it practically impossible to get either end to tilt up to a degree that would effect a safe surface return. Build Summary: -normal steel -third row placed hovers with 0.80 hover height -anti sink hover trial and test -bottom row protrudes just a few inches above waterline (weight checks) -level tilt test Here is a collection of functional hv boats I have built using the concepts laid out in this guide. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1425067582 you can use boats to explore the large water planets we can now potentially generate, you can use them also as viable survival start vessels or most of them as they are cheap and some offer even fewer basic survival gear than others. The ability to house yourself on a large lake or water body with no drone base attack potential for HV. Not a lot of players are on the water either so its a good place to hide in a small boat especially on a size 4-5 water planet ! I have played 2 online survival games with boat hv as my starting craft/base and the idea was brilliant and worked well. They look cool and double as luxury craft at the same time as being a potentially useful commodity.
